A Christmas Gift
This being the season that it is I’ve been thinking about gifts, giving and receiving. I wasn’t as well-prepared as I would have liked to been this year, gift-wise. I was quite organised with the cards, but not so much with the gifts. There were times in which I found myself being presented with a gift that I had not prepared to reciprocate. Then came the attendant feelings of guilt, and feeling that I had let the other party down; because they had given me a gift I felt obliged to have had one prepared for them too (which I didn’t, not really). Sometimes, giving a gift is so much easier than receiving one, especially when you have nothing to give.
We sang this song at church and at our Christmas Eve party.
As little children
We would dream of Christmas morn'
Of all the gifts and toys
We knew we'd find
But we never realized
A baby born one blessed night
Gave us the greatest gift of our lives
We were the reason
That He gave His life
We were the reason
That He suffered and died
To a world that was lost
He gave all He could give
To show us the reason to live
As the years went by
We learned more about gifts
The giving of ourselves
And what that means
On a dark and cloudy day
A man hung crying in the rain
All because of love, all because of love
God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing - or should we say ‘seeing’? there are no tenses in God - the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath’s sake, hitched up. If I may dare the biological image, God is a ‘host’ who deliberately creates His own parasites; causes us to be that we may exploit and ‘take advantage of’ Him. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.
In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity; down further still, if embryologists are right, to recapitulate in the womb ancient and pre-human phases of life; down to the very roots and seabed of Nature He has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him.
In this season of giving we remember most of all, God’s gift of love. Infinitely costly yet freely, and gladly, given.
For to us a child is born
to us a Son is given
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Perhaps the greatest challenge that we all face is learning how to receive a gift that is, all at once, both incredibly humbling and hopelessly exhilarating.
Heartfelt thanks to all my dear family and friends.
Wishing everyone a joy-filled Christmas season, and a very blessed New Year.
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